The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and the well-being of diverse and democratic societies.
Since 2013, the foundation's Scholarly Communications program has been making a series of grants designed to support and strengthen a body of archival practice called community-based archiving with the goal of helping to diversify the body of primary source evidence available to activists, artists, and researchers in humanities fields, community historians, genealogists, teachers, and students.
Through the program, the foundation will award grants ranging between $25,000 and $100,000 in support of community-based archives that represent and serve communities marginalized due to oppression based on race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, class, sexuality, religion, ability, and/or geographic location.
Grant funds may be used for operational support, including general support for staff, space, and utilities; collections care, including storage, cataloging, description, and preservation; and programming and outreach activities, including the collection of new materials, exhibitions, publications, or other uses of the collections.
For the purposes of this Request for Proposals, community-based archives must demonstrate that the community members being served and represented actively participate in their archival processes and make key decisions about what to collect and how.
To be eligible, organizations must be located in the United States or one of its territories; be tax exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code or have an organization with 501(c)(3) status serving as a fiscal sponsor; and have an annual operating budget of no more than $1 million.
Click here for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation website for complete program guidelines and application instructions.
